“It’s stupid, but the house feels different. Like Shelly’s spirit isn’t here anymore.” Emma glanced around. The main part of the house was now nothing but a shell. She shrugged, wrapping her arms around herself. “Nothing stays the same, does it? People leave, move on, change.”
She hadn’t been thinking about Dylan when she’d said it, but her words lingered in the air, attaching themselves more to their relationship than to Shelly’s memory.
Dylan faced her, gripped her biceps, and turned her toward him, his expression serious. Almost grave. “Things do change. People do leave or move on, whether we want it or not. We don’t have any control over that. But we do have control over what choices we make next. And sometimes change means that something even better can fill the new space. I remember Shelly as a happy, giving, eternal optimist. I know she loved you, and I believe she’d approve of what we’re doing.”
Tears came out of nowhere and burned Emma’s eyes. Before she could dip her head and hide them, Dylan pulled her close.
She pressed her face to his chest and hugged his torso. He was so warm, so strong, so sweet. He smelled familiar, like earthy Dylan. A scent that moved mountains inside her. The stirring sparked a flash of heat. Desire bloomed in the pit of her stomach. She wanted to tilt her head back and kiss him. Wanted to strip off his clothes and feel him inside her again. Filling her. Completing her. Silencing all the self-doubt, soothing all the aches and pains of the past.
He ran a hand down her hair. “I bet you’d be really good at texturing.”
She pulled away. “What?”
“Texturing.” He cradled her head in both hands and swiped at tears on her cheeks. And the way he looked at her, with love etched in his expression, twisted her heart. “Bet you’d wield a trowel like a pro.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I’ll show you.” He kissed her forehead and let his lips linger. It took her back in time. To the way he’d kissed her before he’d left on that trip that changed their lives. It made her realize how badly she wanted him back. Wanted their lives back. Wanted all their hopes and dreams back.
Only, there was no going back.
Then he stepped away, took her hand, picked up a five-gallon bucket of something in the other, and walked her down the hall. After covering the hardwood floors with tarps, Dylan pulled in a ladder and filled a metal trough with drywall mud.
The process was simpler than Emma would have guessed and consisted of simply spreading a thin layer of the mud onto the walls, filling imperfections, and smoothing over old uneven texture.
Then he gave her the trowel and watched her try.
She stepped back and compared her work to Dylan’s. “This is harder than it looks.”
“Keep your touch light, but not light enough to leave too much mud on the wall. And don’t worry about making it perfect. You’ll sand it down to make it smooth after it dries. So the smoother you make it in this step, the less work you’ll have to do later.”
He stepped up behind her and covered her hand on the trowel with his, then wrapped his other arm around her waist, drew her body back against his and moved them as one, giving her the feel of applying the mud the way he would. The movement also brought back a wildly erotic memory of the way he’d woken her deep in the night and made love to her just seventy-two hours ago in the next room.
Her heart swelled with the kind of need only Dylan could fill.
He felt it too. He brought the hand with the trowel away from the wall and around her body. Pressed his lips to her neck and moaned against her skin, echoing the desire they’d shared such a short time ago.
“I’d better get out of here”—his murmur shot tingles across her skin—“before I get crazy ideas of smearing this mud all over your gorgeous naked body.”
With a playful bite on her earlobe and a solid open-palmed swat to her ass, he left the room.
It took Emma long, torturous moments to drag out her rational side, shake off the tingling lust, and wipe the grin from her face. Not once in her year-and-a-half-long relationship with Liam had he ever been playful enough to slap her on the ass. Nor had he ever made her t
ingle from the roots of her hair to the soles of her feet.
Music came on and drifted through the house, followed by the sound of Dylan ripping walls down.
Emma studied Dylan’s work again, took a deep breath and added another swipe of mud to the wall. She lost herself in the work. Not exactly artistic, but something about the motion made her feel loose and relaxed.
She’d finished one wall and moved to the next when she heard an unfamiliar female voice in the house. She moved to work on the wall with the door to listen.
“Dude,” the woman said. “You’re a machine.”
“And you’re early,” Dylan said.
“Just checking in. I have to run out to one of my jobsites. I may need to push the framing back a couple hours.”
That told Emma it was Miranda who’d come in.